14. The Campaign to Make This a Reality

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

– Aristotle

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

– George Bernard Shaw

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

– Swami Vivekananda

(Video). I fully recognize that in 2016, much of this will be dismissed as too radical. Terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘economically ignorant’ will intrude as mosquitoes of disapproval, and I am prepared to withstand that phase. In 2017, opposition will start to erode as the recession begins to manifest and deflation starts to exceed even seemingly high levels of monetary expansion. In 2018, there will be even less resistance to these ideas once ‘#Another$TrillionQE’ is no longer an unusual recommendation, and so on. Eventually, it is my goal to have the Overton Window move to a point that these concepts receive serious debate. If we are very fortunate, at least some of these ideas may be seen as prescient by the 2020s.

I am just one man, without any ‘establishment’ backing, posting this whitepaper on a blog. I have run solo, multi-year, volunteer-sustained charities in the past, such as The Uplift Prize, but this endeavor is much greater in scope. Since the greatest things ever accomplished have been accomplished by teams, and if you like some of the ideas presented here, I would like to recruit your help. As a grassroots campaign, some of the avenues we can begin with are :

Send this to people you know who may be interested in the subject matter (.pdf of entire book here), and persuade them to digest the material. Especially if they are outside of the US.

Viral marketing through social media. Whether Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or anywhere else, post this wherever you feel it may be appropriate (such as retweeting my ‘ATOM Award of the Week’).

Help me build exposure by connecting with, and present this material to, key figures in the mainstream media, who can then bring this to a broader audience.

Following some media exposure, the next step is to present to central banks, elected officials, and thought leaders. If you have a suitable contact, help arrange a meeting or phonecall where I can present these ideas to them.

Help this set of ideas become part of the discourse for the 2016 US election and other elections worldwide. Refer back to the ‘ATOM Political Platform’ section.

If you are good at getting sponsors, the right type of sponsorship is very valuable here.

Help me organize and execute an ATOM video contest, where entrants produce a video that evangelizes and simplifies the concepts and ideas for a mass audience, for a prize of ~$10,000 or so.

Help me appear at venues such as TED to deliver a presentation on some or all of the subject matter here. Smaller conferences are also valuable, provided the talk is videotaped and posted online.

Think about what is it that you do exceptionally well, and we will try to incorporate your talents into this campaign. Keep reminding yourself how great it will be for your Federal income taxes to evaporate away, and how your stipend keeps rising exponentially. Each action you take, however small it may seem at the time, assists the campaign of making this a reality. Getting these ideas to the decision-makers may take time, and the skepticism and debate may take even more time. But always remember that every grain of sand we deposit in the ocean makes the level of the ocean rise a tiny bit, so each action edges us towards the grand goal.

If you are enthusiastic about these ideas, join with me in this campaign, and start working on some of the bullet points above, as well as ideas of your own. Contact me on LinkedIn here.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I have just read the whole thing, and even having religiously digested your earlier works on "the Futurist", I am astounded. It will take many rereads to truly grasp what you are driving at, but I have already shared amongst my social network. I will do what I can to spread these ideas.

How would you consider Ireland as a possible ATOM start point, given its a vibrant fairly free market, pro business economy with a lot of IT investment? Irish politics is a dumpster fire of populist nonsense though, so maybe not.

Thanks, Stephen. We are not the establishment, but spreading the ideas will eventually enable us to get the policies debated in the highest tiers of government.

Ireland has a high technology density and low taxes, BUT,...

....it uses the Euro, and hence can only do an ATOM-derived DUES program when the entire Eurozone does it. All countries using the Euro are under the European Central Bank. The ECB does generate 80B Euros/month at present, but that is not enough, and they are nowhere near thinking about monetizing government spending.

That is the primary disadvantage Ireland has relative to Switzerland. The Eurozone itself will migrate only after a country like Switzerland demonstrates success. Britain is now a candidate to do it as well, as it is free of the entire EU (and was never in the Eurozone).

One suggestion: It would be good and helpful to have one or more policy recommendation documents available as resources here. Concise, formatted with standard policy recommendation templates, arguing the key salient points, and with links back to here and other resources as necessary. Even a Google Doc or Wiki that could be copied and edited / improved by the community over time.

We have to keep inching ahead. The DUES combined with 0% income tax will correct layer upon layer of problems.

Note that men and women get the same DUES, and every child upon turning 18 does as well. The DUES cannot be garnished by anyone, so replaces alimony, CS, wage garnishment, etc. and all associated bureaucracies. It disincentivizes single motherhood since a childless woman vs. single mother get the same DUES (unlike now).

Congratulations Kartik on reaching the enlightenment plateau. It is rare that people can come to these conclusions by themselves and not succumb to the myriad propaganda offering fail-able solutions. I think your end solution is a pretty good one that has numerous points of merit. I especially like the new (to me) assessment of real vs. nominal GDP. It fits very well. My only serious issue is that it still relies on government (elite controlled) action by both self serving politicians and far more self serving central bankers. After coming to that realization and seeing the massive delay overcoming that would incur, I hunted down an even better solution.

As you might imagine, it's far too complex in its entirety to go into here but some high points follow to begin the discussion. And just for disclosure, I'm a fully ATOM based person, creating the first in a long string of technologies that accelerate the trendline not only back to the norm but onto a high trajectory.

The solution I propose centers around a digital currency (I'll use Bitcoin for simple reference but it could be another existing or new one.) If the Bitcoin community agreed to implement an additional transaction fee on every transaction of 1%, regardless of who/what the transfer was for, and put that into a single account. Then daily, that account was distributed equally to every member whom signed up for the free dividend, it would quickly become self propagating into the benefits you cite in your program. Obviously, some rules need to be created to manage such a system but they could all be done autonomously, ensuring that admin costs remain marginally zero.

By replacing one's transactions in fiat with digital, one loses all the taxes paid via the fiat (mostly commerce and business and eventually credit creation) and replaces them with a simple method (Bitcoin transactions are/will be insanely easy) that is taxed a mere 1%. Combine this with the spending power of those receiving the dividend and you get an attraction of not only the intra Bitcoin transactions but also the investment of fiat money to fund new Bitcoin ventures.

The 'monetary expansion' phase would be derived from the increased wealth created in Bitcoin as people migrate more of their commerce to it and it's value increases. It would be instantly global in scope, moving the world's poorest up first and then attacking poverty on each successive level. It carries many of the same benefits of increasing commerce and economic activity and even advancing the ATOM principles of that community as it grew. However, as it attracted business activity, it would do so at the expense of the fiat currencies those businesses used to work in. This has the effect of increasing the Bitcoin money supply (the value, not the nominal units) even more than your 20% requirement. It would increase more by the amount it robbed from the fiat currency as well. This automatic process would not rely on policy but would be market driven and autonomous. Even autonomous transactions (e.g. micro-payments between robots, per click charges) and personal/black market transactions would be captured as long as they were done in the instant digital world. The list of benefits is nearly endless but at your caliber, I suspect you need no list. Most relevant to this discussion is that services would either not be needed anymore or would in large part, be offered via the free market. While this doesn't automatically reduce government spending, it certainly removes most of the justification (and budget) for many aid programs. Ideally, this reduction would be in sync with the reduced tax revenue so governments could maintain balanced budgets while they fell dramatically. And yes, this would even include war budgets.

On the logistical side, the implementation can be done in such a way as to create even more societal benefits rather than act as a cost. In my proposal, I outline a system of unique account verification where DNA scanners could be used and where the incentive is for people to invest in many of them (lowering their cost from $1000 to $50 each) while earning an income by signing up new dividend account holders. This would create a global, one-way anonymous database of DNA information that was immensely useful for the medical research community while allowing them to post meta-tags of relevant info anonymously back to the human whom it belongs to. This can even migrated at some pre-determined future time to genome mapping for even greater benefit.

In the long term, I see the future of economics undergoing a paradigm shift and eliminating all the non-productive pieces. This proposal seeks to accelerate those changes to bring about the end state much sooner. For example, the entire purpose of the public stock market is allow some people to earn a living from the productive profits of a business simple because the market was not efficient enough for said business to capitalize their growth soon enough. Making this money from trading robs that from the long term wages of both the labor and owner profits so eliminating it has the net effect of increasing the ATOM. Tech deflation could ramp up by far more than your 16-24% estimate if it weren't for this theft. As such, the end state (in a perfect world) would have a different mechanism to fund company growth at low or no cost and would allow the deflation to accelerate faster. By transitioning a company's investor transactions to digital, numerous algorithm methods and efficiencies, coupled with instant competition, could reduce said costs. The good part here is that practices like hedging, options and high frequency trading would not be practical if each separate transaction realized a 1% cost. Therefore, the businesses would migrate to the digital side and leave the corruption behind them. Win-win, for the company and society. Not so much for the Wall St. clan.

The other aspect of the end state is that tech advancement has migrated us to what Jeremy Rifkin calls the zero marginal cost. I believe this should have been a key piece in economics since it was created but we finally have the ability to incorporate it now. There are now what I call "magic boxes" in every industry that will disrupt the wasteful aspects into purely productive aspects. For me, a magic box for home energy is like a perfect solar system. It would replace a long time rent (the monthly power bill) with a short term purchase, while satisfying all the needs relevant to said good or service. My threshold is an 8 year pay off maximum and lasting a lifetime with minimal maintenance. Also, to qualify as a magic box, it should be produced locally, use fully recyclable resources and be promoted via local awareness, not push-advertising. Very few fully completed magic boxes are on the market but labs and garages do already have the rest in the works. The only one I see as needing a boost for that time frame is fighting disease, hence the DNA database. Feel free to contact me to debate any specific ones but for brevity, I can simply say that within 10 years and with a little luck, everything you can need or want can either be an owned or a shared magic box.

As you can imagine, paying off one's lifetime worth of living expenses in a max of 8 years (an average of 6), reduces the real cost of living by 85% or more. Adding back in the costs of emergencies, vacations and 'oh crap savings', brings it to around 80%. This couples nicely with the reduced jobs that will be available, the increase in unemployment and happily, with the increase in personal spending power of the future. The net effect is that working for a paycheck to make a living can migrate to doing a hobby/passion/mission for nothing more than the internal and/or external social sense of accomplishment. In a word, money will be relegated to insignificance it will no longer be worth the hassle of managing it.

This will accelerate the ATOM transition far too fast for ANY policies to keep up. That's the thing about exponential technologies that all feed into each other. They don't go from 2% to 8% in 5 years and then to 20% in 5 more. Their third number is pushing the 90% adoption curve barrier. To be clear however, I see the ATOM progress and the growth of magic box disruptions as unstoppable so our efforts really only amount to easing pain during the transition.

In short, we simply don't have the time to wait. The only way I see things remaining even close to balanced is to jump straight to a private, global, instant, autonomous and market driven solution.

Have a look at my paper and let me know what you think. You can find it on the usbig (.net) site under discussion papers http://usbig.net/papers.php . I agree that this topic needs a champion but I also believe that only one proposal should be promoted so we should engage debate to find which one to promote first and then join forces down that path. Being more focused on bringing some magic boxes to the people, I'm looking for that champion.

Thanks for reading the entire book and making such a detailed comment.

My only serious issue is that it still relies on government (elite controlled) action by both self serving politicians and far more self serving central bankers.

Well.... Consider that :

a) Central banks become more important, but also more transparent. They really have no micro-control other than publishing the monthly DUES increase rate. The range of activities they conduct become simpler.

b) Similarly, note that the other parts of government slim down. Entire departments like the IRS and SSA can be abolished. The DUES requires almost no bureaucrats to administer, just the analytical team at the Federal Reserve that calculates the monthly increase. Non-military Federal Government headcount can fall by 80% or more.

In the long term, I see the future of economics undergoing a paradigm shift and eliminating all the non-productive pieces.

Central banks have vastly more power than you seem to suggest. They can manipulate markets, currency exchange rates, commodities, money swaps, trading platforms, influence bonds, and generally control entire industries indirectly. This is due to the fact that the people in the central bank positions are the same people in the top mega banks. One look at their history of criminal acts for which they repeatedly pay wrist-slap fines when caught, and it's undeniable how deep they are. Some would even say they cause war to follow those countries that dare to threaten the dominance of a few (or single) fiat currency in global commerce.

With that in mind, you want to give them more power? Transparency of people knowing they've been caught so many times has not stopped it, nor would it if the stakes were immensely higher.

So, your proposal leads to two possible outcomes. First is they stop it from succeeding and second is they make things worse through the new changes. And this is on top of us waiting years for our minuscule movements to grow into action.

Your item #2 assumes the second of those outcomes, which is now a negative, not a positive.

The root problem here is one of power. They have it and the people don't. But that statement relies heavily on its definition. In all areas, power is derived from discretionary income - period. It really is that simple.

Without discretionary income, or spendable cash, a person has no voice in politics, social clout or market influence. Acts exerting power like that will always be prioritized after surviving, climbing to or maintaining one's living standards. This lack of power is often called apathy but that's incorrect. They cite the definition of crazy (doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results) as their justification but in reality, they're correct. Without the power, a few voices will never rally the masses to look beyond the continuum of false black and white choices they are presented with. Those who sense this are hence labeled apathetic and presented as 'the other side' in every battle.

Unfortunately, the rentier society has succeeded in robbing all non-wealthy people to the point they'll compromise all their discretionary income plus a little more before they fight back. So, by definition, they have no extra to wield any power.

And this is exactly how the system is designed. Corporations don't want people rising to boycott cell phone charges that are too high. Politicians don't want people becoming active in voting groups. Bankers don't want people to learn how to avoid bank fees, interest or mega-stock scams.

To be clear, they're not actually plotting against these actions but more just chasing every profit path they can exploit. The end result is the same. And the follow on is that the people do not, will not and never will have any power to make the world what they want again... until they have the economic excess to spend on doing so.

You suggest I read your education piece. While a bit old now, it is a prime example of a magic box disruption of an industry that's beyond its sell-by date. As you can see above, I wrote that every industry (seriously, I can't think of one exception) is primed for that exact magic box disruption. And most of them will happen faster due to the assistance of AI, robotics, self/local movements, climate fears, inequality fears, technological unemployment and other ATOM based changes. In other words, you're preachin' to the choir.

The ATOM DUES program actually decreases central bank power from current levels while increasing transparency, despite the larger amount of monetary creation. Central banks have no function other than the calculate the monthly increase and send out the direct deposits (1 payer to 220 million recipients).

Remember that the elimination of the IRS, SSA, Welfare administration, etc. is a massive reduction in government power, particularly of identity politics, politicized IRS audits, perverse welfare incentives, etc. The removal of this is more than worth the increase in central bank importance (which I still say is a reduction in power due to the very high transparency of the monthly DUES increment calculation).

Getting a new currency like Bitcoin is too difficult, as the nation-states of the world will stop that (even with force) if it is a threat to their existing currency. It is better to work within their currencies to create a DUES-type program of higher transparency. The opposition will be much lower.

The other aspect of the end state is that tech advancement has migrated us to what Jeremy Rifkin calls the zero marginal cost.

Yes. This is why a DUES with a simultaneous phase-out of all income taxes is possible now. It involves working with central banks, not against them (impossible at present).

Yes, there is disruption everywhere. What you call magic boxes apply to any item which is too expensive. And I mean *any* product or service, including what one human provides to another. Note that within the ATOM, I contend that all disruptions are interconnected, and there is a measurable 'size' of disruptions happening at any given time, which is rising gradually and exponentially.

Yes, I like your proposal, since there is only enough effort to promote one given our limited time and resources.

Kartik,
Thnx for the reply.
The benefits you cite from implementing ATOM DUES, while worthwhile, only arise after it is implemented. Since powerful entities would lose considerable market power, they will stop this from happening, especially since they have the power to do so. Unlike legislating changes, they have zero power to stop a crypto currency like Bitcoin. They've already tried and failed. Similarly, they could not stop said currency from distributing funds autonomously. It's just not gonna happen that they can stop the millions of computers miners from earning money because the more they accomplish, the higher the incentive to hide it or go dark.

In regards to "working with their currencies", it would be very easy to divert a percentage of the daily dividend amount to the local governments under whose jurisdiction the transaction was initiated and completed. In this way, those governments would get their tax money and would become hooked on said income. This would end their incentive to kill the system. The only problem there is creating an entirely autonomous system up front to determine what % to give them.

And finally, as you agree, "*any* product or service" can be disrupted. That should not exclude money issues nor governance.

It is much harder to get a cryptocurrency up to sufficient size (which still has not happened for Bitcoin after all these years), than to merely transition existing central bank action to DUES. Remember that the currency of a major state does have a military behind it.

Plus, the key for technology to accelerate back to the trendline rate is a) elimination of income tax, and b) increase of Nominal GDP. Both are achieved under the ATOM-DUES.

What you are proposing is much more antagonistic to existing powers than what I am proposing. Remember, central banks are on my side...

I do feel that that ATOM program is more comprehensive, addressing a wider range of challenges while making fewer enemies.

There is no 'sufficient size' needed for the currency to begin at because it will grow (both in adoption and value) from the attraction of new 'free money' members. This being digital, global and pseudo-anonymous, means it cannot be stopped. If it remains small, it will only hold the commerce of its members and if it grows massively, it may be able to attract the activities of the central banks as well. Either way, it works the same.

This is not antagonistic. It is neutral. The only way it is antagonizing the central banks is if they are more controlling than they officially purport to be. So, either they have your stated mandate and no ulterior motives - in which case they don't fight it, or they are more nefarious - and seek to stop the competition. Either way, the massive control and theft they wield over the economy gets diminished. And that is only a good thing because they literally are the biggest example of waste, fraud and abuse in the entire economy. Only naivete would believe they are on our side. They are only on their own side.

There is another way to accelerate back to the trendline. We can foster private investment in disruptive technologies. To do this, we can also decrease the costs of living (via those advancements) and leave the savings in the hands of the adopters of said tech. Picture it this way, what would you spend your income on as your expenses ramped from current to 5% of current over the next 5 years? You would first eliminate debt, then build savings and then invest in more tech to further reduce your COL. By 5 year's time, you would be debt free, have sufficient savings and have enough investment income to retire and leave your job to the next person.

In short, the rigged game of government running the economy is just that. It is being rigged for politicians, banks, big industry and empire building. Its past time to disrupt that, piecemeal or in blocks, leaving only a productive economy where money has no other purpose than a medium of exchange and value placeholder. Using it as a tool of oppression needs to cease.

I agree with the latter 50% of your comment. Disruptions create new wealth, but the QE in the form of a DUES can provide a cushioning affect for the human turbulence.

Under the ATOM program here, the intrusiveness of the government is reduced greatly, since many, many departments are eliminated and income tax is 0%. The Federal Reserve is more transparent as well, as it has to publish the monthly increase rate openly. There is no scope for smoke and mirrors at all.

Hi Kartik,
Here's another project that is active in the arena of what you might call "individually applied ATOM": http://iamcicada.com/cicada-deep-dive/
If you read through, you'll discover reference to how a "UBI" is facilitated by the technology.
Have you come any ways along in realising how organic, bottom-up DUES/UBI might become manifest (such as through this, and other, blockchain-type projects) rather than only top-down from central banks/nation states?

Kartik,
There's a great deal to like in your plan - but it suffers from an inadequate understanding of computer technology.

The key element I believe you are missing is that there is NO job that cannot be automated today. Anything a human being can do - even academic research - can be done better by a self-learning software-controlled entity conducting experiments and collecting data worldwide from its interest set. You should find this obvious looking at whatever jobs you wish. What do they require? If you're objective, you'll see their primary requirements are memory and deductive reasoning - both of which computers have more than adequately demonstrated over the past 20 years. Whatever inductive input the work requires can be provided by ONE human complementing hundreds of robotic entities.

While there is NO question technologically that all jobs CAN be automated, to what extent they WILL be - and how rapidly - will be determined by economics. Wherever technology is able to provide better products/services at lower price, there are many businesses (and businesspeople - and entrepreneurs), worldwide, aggressively pursuing these opportunities (hence, the likelihood is sooner than later).

Until this prospect of mass unemployment is wholly accepted (which I don't see in your plan), no viable solution is possible.

The key element I believe you are missing is that there is NO job that cannot be automated today.

That is largely true in theory, but as you point out, this is a lengthy process, and new jobs are still created simultaneously. There are 145M jobs in the US today + 6 million unfilled openings. This 151M total is the highest ever number, despite all the automation and the skills mismatch that is leaving some people behind.

Until this prospect of mass unemployment is wholly accepted (which I don't see in your plan), no viable solution is possible.

That is why there is DUES, to cushion the people who just cannot fill the new jobs. Plus, the reduction of income taxes to 0% will create a vast number of new businesses as well. Mass unemployment would not happen at all under my plan. The soonest that the situation you describe could occur is the 2040s, by which time the DUES could easily be very high.

When the number of jobs in the US falls 10% below the all-time peak, then we can start to worry about that. Until then, I say the rate of new creation still outpaces the rate of elimination, even if all jobs *in theory* can be automated. The leisure class will not be more than 20% of the adult working-age population.

this is a lengthy process, and new jobs are still created simultaneously

This is a fallacy. You yourself extol the acceleration of technology - and I believe you've even underestimated it. If you were embedded in the worldwide entrepreneurial community (as I have been the past 50 years), you'd better see what I mean. And it's not new JOBS that are/will be created - it's new entrepreneurs doing their own thing, having no need for employees. (I believe your job numbers are a temporary blip and very misleading if you look closely at the actual "jobs" and where they're leading. (Keep in mind that there is NO job that cannot be automated - and that's not theory - in each case, it's just a matter of whether it's financially worth the effort.)

You appear to be seeing technology as an economic sector that is becoming a new growth industry. To me that's terribly short-sighted. Rather the advancing technology is underlying ALL economic sectors, improving their products/services and lowering their costs.

You yourself extol the acceleration of technology - and I believe you've even underestimated it.

Then the DUES would rise even faster than the 16-24% annual rate I estimate. The beauty of the DUES is that it adjusts dynamically as the rate of technological change adjusts.

And it's not new JOBS that are/will be created - it's new entrepreneurs doing their own thing, having no need for employees.

Read Chapters 4 and 11.

Rather the advancing technology is underlying ALL economic sectors, improving their products/services and lowering their costs.

This publication is entirely about that. Have you read the whole thing? That is literally the primary theme of the whole publication.

*If* all jobs are at risk for automation, then the DUES solution is the best solution of all. But we are a long way from that, since job reduction of a scale you mention is not yet underway in the slightest. Like I said, when the jobs data is 10% lower than the peak, then we can begin to think that job elimination is now overtaking job creation. Right now, it is too early to assume that will be the case. If the job number is shaky, one can corroborate that with Personal Income, Consumer Confidence, Retail Sales, etc.

Remember, overestimating the rate of technological change also happens (even if most people underestimate it). Ray Kurzweil says the singularity is 2045, but I say it is not as soon; more like 2060-65.

Anyway, my frequent articles about these subjects are on The Futurist, so it would be great to have you comment regularly there.